Octogenarian goes to bat for history

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, January 22, 2000

CARL HAASE isn't a traditional collector but he's a true collector. He collects memories instead of

memorabilia.

Haase, an 80-year-old San Franciscan, has devoted much of the last five years to combing through library files and microfilm, documenting in fine detail the Pacific Coast League and the two teams he loved when he was a kid - the San Francisco Seals and Missions.

That's not all the ever-active Haase does. He walks 10 miles or more a day and he volunteers 400 hours a year as a docent, giving tours of Angel Island.

But his heart is very much in those baseball statistics from long ago.

"I'm not sure that anyone has gone through all the detail on the PCL that I have," he said. "I'm fortunate to have my health and my marbles. This has been a good tonic for me. I even think it's helped my vision a little bit."

Haase has always had a pretty clear view of the past.

"I'm a lifelong baseball fan," he said. "When I grew up, all we did was play baseball. If you wanted to be a pro athlete in those days, it was either as a baseball player or a boxer. But baseball was the newspapers' focus for about eight months out of the year."

Haase saw the DiMaggio brothers and other major-leaguers-to-be like Eddie Joost when they were playing semipro baseball in The City.

He began following the Seals at Recreation Park in 1929.

The names come rolling out when he talks about those early days. "Frank Crosetti, Lefty Gomez, Smead Jolley, Red Wingo, I can recall hundreds of them," he said. "Nearly all gone now."

Haase has lost much of his enthusiasm for the modern game because of things like free agency and the designated-hitter rule, but the PCL still fascinates him.

"I can name the rosters of practically all the clubs from memory for the peak years in the late '20s and the '30s," he said.

His intense research began in 1995, when he met baseball historian Bill James of

Sacramento, who was planning to write a book on the Seals.

The research soon turned into a passion.

"I'm putting together three-ring binders for every year of the Seals and Missions," he said. "I may have 100 boxscores for each season. I like to know where the players came from and what happened to them. I've found guys who only played one inning. It's so much fun to get all this material, and when you put it together, it makes a nice running recap - a chronology - of the seasons."

Haase hopes to turn his research on the Missions ("They were first known as the Bears, until Cal protested, and later the Monks, Bears and Mission Reds," he said) - into a book of his own, if he can find the right collaborator.

"This is a labor of love for me," he said. "I used to be an accountant. I like all that detail. It keeps me sharp."

He has a larger purpose, too. He wants to leave a legacy for baseball fans who are interested in history, but weren't around to watch the greats of a long-gone league.

SAM is now SAMAC

Sports, Accessories and Memorabilia (SAM) of Menlo Park, the hobby's largest producer of bobbing head dolls, has changed its name to SAMAC.

"The change was made mostly to encompass our entire line of products," company president Mark Bloomquist said. "We are mainly known for our limited-edition bobbing head dolls. The new, non-bobbing head releases have confused collectors, buyers and distributors who assumed we made only the bobbing heads. We feel the new name may make people aware that our company produces a whole line of collectibles.

"Also, people used to assume that a man named Sam actually owned the company. We'd get phone calls from people asking to talk to Sam."

This and that

T-Mac Sports decided to add Northern Iowa to its roster of

collectible football helmets last summer. Smart move. NFL MVP Kurt Warner played at the Iowa school. Thanks to his sudden success, T-Mac has sold more than 1,000 Panther helmets, and is several months behind in filling orders. &lt;

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